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India’s Boom Brings Fortunes to Some Dalits

By The New York Times December 21, 2011 10:49 pmDecember 21, 2011 10:49 pm

Kuni Takahashi for The New York TimesAshok Khade, Managing Director Das Offshore Engineering Pvt. Ltd., with his staff at the company headquarters in Navi Mumbai.

India is home to a “tiny but growing class of millionaires from the Dalit population,” Lydia Polgreen writes in a long feature article in The New York Times today.

“Dalits can buy rank in the market economy,” Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit activist and researcher, says in the article. “India is moving from a caste-based to a class-based society, where if you have all the goodies in life and your bank account is booming, you are acceptable.”

Ashok Khade, a businessman featured in the piece, went from being a ostracized member of his village to a BMW-owning sought-after employer.

His mother, the article said, “now 86, used to work for upper-caste farmers for pennies a day. Now she dresses in expensive silk saris, rides in a chauffeured car and wears thick gold chains and bangles.”

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